HI, ladies!!
It is Friday, September 19, 2008, today, and has been raining on an off due to the Typhoon 13 at low speed.
Rose, it’s wonderful to hear that you attended Yuko Matsumoto’s seminar. You must have enjoyed the lecture about Anne. Your narrative of Shakespeare was very intriguing and I also feel like reading the whole story in English.
The other day when I was checking a catalog of Co-op’s products as usual, there were a lot of next year’s calendars in it. Is it already the end of this year?! Restless, isn’t it? I’ve still felt the heat…
So, I’ll get back to my housework. Have a good weekend!
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Dear Cherry and friends,
Something was wrong with my PC. I hadn't handled it till this morning. After reading I hope that plum can get to Kumamoto in safety. When I read about Cherry's father who has his own style of expressing, I cannot but remember my father. Rose,thank you for introducing fascinaitng part of Anne of Green Gables. I'd like to watch it on TV, too.
The news that a high school student secretly videotaped her friends at school excusion bathing scene and handed it to her boyfriend who was a tutor at juku really surprised me. How could it happen?
What is happening in Japanese school is far from Ann's world. I feel really sorry.
Dear Cherry and friends,
Hello. How are you?
Plum, I'm looking forward to reading how your lecture tour went on.
Cherry, your writing sounds like you got accustomed to this style of writing.
By the way, I didn't know Sarah Palin has a baby.
Sunflower, I enjoyed reading your comments on whether Sarah Palin is a suitable person for the U.S. President. Sarah Palin might be a little reckless, but I think the probability of her getting presidency is quite low. Besides, she seems better than Bush.
I sometimes wonder why the reproductive role has fettered women and deprived them of opportunities.
Perhaps, it is partly because of each woman's self-restraint.
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Nineteenth century women had a lot of self-restraint while getting aware of their own right deprived as an inferior sex.
Whenever they argued the necessity of women's political rights, they had to say it was important not because they need the rights for themselves but because it would contribute to social reform. Such causes like philanthropy in Britain or the antislavery movement in the U.S. drove women into political struggles. Rendall discusses how woman activists eventually obtained political languages for themselves, which we find only the beginning of feminist activism.
It is hardly possible to summarize Jane Rendall's The Origins of Modern Feminism as it is like a book of reference or a collection of important events all of which join the energy to form a power.
I would like to pick up some impressive words and cases from the rest of the book briefly, focusing on British women's movements.
Chapter 4 is about women's education.
As Hannah More's argument suggests, the necessity of women's education was first discussed from the evangelical point of view. The most important role of a woman was a moral educator in her family. For daughters, education was “a preparation of motherhood.” (p. 109) Her argument gave us the impression of “the denial of women's equality.” (p. 112)
Mary Wollstonecraft, on the other hand, “had foreseen the need for better instruction for women to take up employment as teachers.” (p. 125) If women were given opportunities to be educated and “equipped to live independently,” women “would only be able to make a deliberate and rational choice.” (p. 39)
Chapter 5 is about women's work.
Middle-class women lamented the shrinking women's public sphere.
They were concerned that women were losing “traditional female areas of work” because of professionalisation. For example, midwifery was being replaced with medicine as the result of male doctors' efforts to regulate the job. (p.183)
Working-class women's situations were complicated. Women factory workers were sometimes seen in protests or trade unions as paid labourers. However, workers' wives prioritized their husbands' pay increase for it's contribution to their family income.
The rapid expansion of middle class demanded domestic workers in the middle-class households. Accordingly, working-class women moved to the urban area. Such workers had fewer opportunities to band together for their interest than factory workers.
Although the level of women's participation in workers' movements cannot be estimated easily, Rendall sees the seeds of feminism in this field, arguing, “the demand for work, and the circumstances of women's work nevertheless continuing and important factors in the generation of feminist thinking.” (p.188)
In Chapter 6, Rendall further asks how much “the conditions of domestic life brought women together, in shared identifiable concerns, in work, in protest.” (p. 189)
If the sexual division of labor did not burden a majority of women with daily and regular tasks such as fetching water and washing clothes, women of all classes would have accepted the elevated concept of 'domesticity' maintained by upper and middle class women. As they lived in the different worlds, their targets were different.
Communal differences as well as class differences were divisive.
While Perkin's Women and Marriage in Nineteenth Century England examined legal aspects of marriage, Rendall shows us how community attitudes on marriage differed as communal practices and customs were different.
In some areas, co-habitation was popular. In Westminster only 200 out of 700 couples were found to be married in 1848. (p.194) Marriage license could cost too much to working-class couples.
In London between 1840 and 1875, the right to punish a wife physically was accepted. (p.199)
The victims of such male violence were working-class women.
These were working women's realities.
Not all the middle-class women who lived in the idealized sexual division of labor were not satisfied with their marriage and family life. Some women fought to justify divorce and property right. They thought such problems were shared by all the women. They collected signatures to make petitions for “the necessity of protecting the earnings of married women of all classes of the population.” (p.228)
Chapter 7 suggests that nineteenth-century feminist activists pursued the possibility of “expanding and redefining the sphere of women's action.” (p.232) To discuss this, Rendall approaches from the two social activities: politics and philanthropy. The former sometimes accompanied the language of evangelicalism. (p. 239) The latter activity was often extended to political action.
Women were drawn to organized political action for the reform of the parliamentary system.
Female Reform Societies met regularly, but sometimes faced severe attacks.
Chapter 8 shows both individual and organizational feminist cases. First, it considers Flora Tristan's feminism, Margaret Fuller's Transcendentalism, and John Stuart Mill's Subjection of Women.
Secondly, it explores organizational movements of each state, e.g. French socialism, the suffrage movements in the U. S. and Britain, and the anti-slavery movement in the U.S.
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Yesterday I had the first TOEIC class at Open College which is an auxiliary of Aichi University.
I took over the class form Champagne.
I found 3 acquaintances in the class. One of them was my former classmate at Open College. Although some of my friends called or mailed me when they found my photo in the term's brochure, she had not realized the teacher was me until I was introduced to the students. So she was surprised.
Well, I'm going to read Miyake-san's article this afternoon.
Have a good day.
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